Touch
by Devera
Summary: Tokitoh's learning as he goes, but sometimes he just can't work Kubota out. Short and fluffy oneshot inspired by the Wild Adaptor artbook, Sugarcoat.


Author's Notes:

I was looking through Sugar Coat again (for the four-hundredth and sixty-ninth time, haha) and things started getting into my head about the touchy-feely fan-service in the pics (which I'm not saying I dislike, by any means!) vs the actual touching between Kubota and Tokitoh in the manga, which seems more natural and almost second-nature.

And I wondered, and sometimes, this is the sort of thing that happens when I wonder…

_Disclaimer_

Liberties have been taken with the events following Tokitoh's arrival in Kubota's life, which Minekura-sensei is just starting to get to now in the latest chapters published in Chara, so I'm probably going to be way off but hey, it's just meant as food for thinking. If I knew what was really going to happen, I'd be Minekura Kazuya, and, dang. I've checked, and I'm not.

**Touch**

It wasn't that Tokitoh cared one way or the other; he had no memories to compare with so it didn't really matter, except that eventually he started to notice. When he did, it took him a while to figure out what the problem was. After all, the first memory he had, more or less, was of Kobota's face, and the feel of his body pressed close and warm and yet completely safe up against him. It hadn't seemed weird, or unnatural. He hadn't even bothered to question it.

But eventually he started noticing. He noticed by learning and he learned by watching, like he'd had to do with everything else apart from the basics. How people acted with each other, what they said, what they _didn't_ say, body language, expression, tone. He found, as soon as people other than Kubota started coming into the picture, that he didn't really know how to handle them, like there was something inside him that hadn't switched on right when he'd woken up, like there was a big blank space in his head where he knew he should probably know things but didn't.

What he was noticing was that Kubota was different around other people.

Or maybe it was just the way Tokitoh looked at him when other people were around. Maybe he was too used to it being just them. He hadn't left the apartment for a long time, or at least it felt like it, in the beginning. Kubota had never tried to force him, but somehow he'd drawn him out anyway, eventually, without even looking like he was trying. From the bedroom to the living room, to the balcony outside, to the front door, to the Lawson's on the corner, to that quack doctor's, and before he thought about it, he was used to it, being outside, being around other people.

Which was when he started to notice Kubota's differences. Like, when he smiled at people, for a start, it was somehow…less. It wasn't any different to the smile that he gave Tokitoh, yet it _was_, and Tokitoh knew it without knowing _how_ he knew it. And when Kubota spoke to people, it was almost like he was speaking _at_ them, not _with_ them, like there was this distance between Kubota and the world that no words could bridge. Oh, he met their eyes when he spoke to them, sure, but Tokitoh seemed to be the only one to notice it was a way of keeping them _back_ rather than letting them in. The closest Kubota got to his usual self was when that copper Kasai was around, but half the time Tokitoh wondered if that was just because Kasai didn't _want_ him to let him in. It was weird.

But that was less weird than the other thing Tokitoh began to notice about Kubota, and that was the one that really got to him, because he totally didn't understand.

Kubota didn't touch people.

But Kubota touched _him_. A lot. Right from the start, before Tokitoh even understood that it wasn't the same with everyone else, he was always around, slouching on him or leaning on him on the couch or pressing his back up against him in bed. By the time Tokitoh was trailing Kubota to the quack's shop, to the Seven Eleven, to the games store for the latest Capcom release, he was starting to really wonder. He didn't touch people at all, even passing money across a counter or bumming a light off someone in the arcade. No one else seemed to notice that either, how the way Kubota looked at them and talked to them kept them at a distance. And he started wondering. Were other people doing something wrong? Was it because they were outside - in public, as he'd heard people say - but that couldn't be it because Kubota held his hand on the train and threw an arm over his shoulder in the arcade and sat with his thigh pressed against his in the restaurant even when there was a chair facing that he could have sat in.

So what? What was it that was different? The question became so nagging that it started crawling around under Tokitoh's skin like a bug, an itch he couldn't scratch. He didn't get it, and he _wanted_ to get it.

And because, after a whole day of being dragged around town, doing this and that and watching Kubota not do stuff like that – _touching_ – with anyone else, he ended up spending the rest of the night sulking in front of the TV, wondering whether he was supposed to say something, or whether it was him and not everyone else and maybe that meant that there was something wrong with him and Kubota just wasn't saying so. So he watched TV and Kubota came and went, between the living room and the kitchen or the balcony for a smoke or the bedroom, and he didn't say much, which was just fine with Tokitoh anyway.

Except then he went to sit down on the couch, a book in his hand, and one arm flung out over the back of the sofa across Tokitoh's shoulders like it had its own ideas about where it should be and Tokitoh immediately shoved him off.

"Why you always gotta _touch_ me!" he demanded, unable to keep it in any longer, throwing Kubota a look that was meant to put an end to the conversation even though it hadn't really begun and he'd started it anyway. "You don't do it to anyone else!"

"What?" Kubota said intelligently, looking directly at him for the first time that night.

"Well," Tokitoh huffed, as Kubota removed his arm. "You don't touch _other_ people. You stand away from them, and you move if they try and come near you. I never realised how much of a weirdo you were before."

"Ah," Kubota said, still looking at him as if the suddenness of this observation was entirely expected. "You think it's weird?"

"Yeah it's weird. You're not like everybody else, Kubo-chan."

"Hm," Kubota agreed, putting his book down on the seat next to him and leaning back into the cushions a bit. "I'm not, am I." It wasn't meant as a question.

"No," Tokitoh agreed again, feeling like maybe he was getting somewhere with this, even though he wasn't sure where. "You do everything the opposite to other people."

Kubota looked at him again, smiling slightly this time, like he was about to say something he thought was funny. "Oh? And how do you know? Have you been living with someone else behind my back?"

Tokitoh whacked him, because that was stupid. "Don't be stupid!" he added, just to be certain Kubota knew how stupid an idea that actually was. "Who would I live with?"

Kubota shrugged a little and dug around for his cigarettes. "Kasai-san, maybe? He's got a nice apartment, you know. You remember we went there once right?"

"What! That old geezer!" Tokitoh was appalled Kubota would even suggest it. "No way!" And then he realised what Kubota was doing. "And don't change the subject!"

"I wasn't," Kubota objected, but Tokitoh snatched the cigarette pack out of his hands before he had a chance to get a cigarette out, because he was, and they both knew it. Kubota didn't try to snatch them back; he never tried to snatch them back, just looked a bit put out and then sat back again with a small sigh.

"So," he began again after a moment of silence, pushing his thumbs back and forth across the plastic wrapper on the pack he still held in his hands and listening to the soft, familiar sound it made. "Why do you do it?"

"Do what?"

Tokitoh considered throwing the pack at Kubota's head, but he probably would have only caught it and thanked him for returning them.

"Keep _touching_ me all the time!"

"Well," Kubota said slowly, "back then, before you woke up," and he was talking about when Tokitoh had first found himself here, with no idea who he was or who Kubota was, "you were a bit of a handful. Maybe you don't remember, but it seemed to calm you, so..."

"So," Tokitoh repeated after it looked like Kubota wasn't going to continue. He _didn't_ remember, but that was beside the point. "So, why are you doing it now?"

Kubota looked at him in blank surprise. "Right now? But I'm not."

Tokitoh scowled. He knew he didn't really have a sense of when to stop, and maybe Kubota was trying to say he didn't want to talk about it, or couldn't tell him why because he didn't know, but if that was the case, he wanted to hear him say it.

"Not right now! I mean, in _general_! I mean, I'm not crazy now, right? So why do you keep doing it?"

Kubota had his still face on. Tokitoh wondered what was going on behind it. It was the hardest of all of Kubo-chan's faces to read.

"You don't like it anymore?"

"I didn't say _that!_ Sheesh."

The still face slipped and there was almost a smile. "You're right, I suppose. I guess I'm still doing it because _I_ like it. Is that okay?"

He put his arm over the back of the chair again, around Tokitoh's shoulders, punctuating the question with a little squeeze as his breath stirred the hair curling behind Tokitoh's ear. The sensation made something wash down Tokitoh's back, not quite a chill, but almost. He shouldered him away in annoyance, ignoring the way Kubota's smile didn't widen so much as move into his eyes.

"You're such a moron! Don't ask me if something like that's okay! Geez."

"Then you do like it?"

Tokitoh shoved the packet back at Kubota, without looking at him. "I didn't say that either, you perv! And if you're going to smoke, don't do it in the house. I'm going to bed!"

"Yes, yes," Kubota said agreeably, still sitting as Tokitoh rolled himself up out of the couch and made his way around the end of it towards the bedroom door. "I'll be in in a little while. But Tokitoh?"

Tokitoh stopped and looked back at him. Kubota had turned around and was draped over the back of the sofa, one arm dangling over, an unlit cigarette hanging between his slender fingers.

"What? I'm tired."

"You didn't say if I should stop or not," Kubota pointed out.

Tokitoh rolled his eyes and turned back towards the bedroom.

"You're such a moron, Kubo-chan," he told him, and Kubota laughed and said; "I am, aren't I." like he was happy about it. Tokitoh shook his head as he shut the bedroom door. He really was never going to understand that weird guy, he decided, as he crawled into his side of the bed, making sure he left enough room for Kubota when he followed him in.


End file.
